trees and
sent the loosened oak blossoms drifting to the ground, from high out of
an oak top came a most exquisite song. At the first note of this
grosbeak all other songs were forgotten--they were noise and
chatter--this was pure music. It was like passing from the cries of the
street into the hall of a symphony concert. The black-headed grosbeak
has not the spirituality of the hermit thrush, and his ordinary song is
not so remarkable, but his love song excels that of any bird I have ever
heard in finish, rich melody, and music. As I listened, my surroundings
harmonized so perfectly with the wonderful song echoing through the
great trees that the old oak garden seemed an enchanted bower. The
drooping branches were a leafy lattice through which the afternoon sun
filtered, steeping the oaks in thick still sunshine. Last year's leaves
drifted slowly to the ground, while the bees droned about the yellow
tassels of the blooming trees. As a violinist, lingering to perfect a
note, draws his bow again and again over the strings, so this rapt
musician dwelt tenderly on his highest notes, trolling them over till
each was more exquisite and tender than the last, and the ear was
charmed with his love song--a song of ideal love fit to be dreamed of in
this stately green oak garden filled with golden sunlight.

XIV.

A MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY.

ON a peg just inside the door of the ranchman's old wine shed hung one
of the horses' unused nosebags. A lad on the place told me that a wren
had a nest in it, and added that he had seen a fight between the wren
and a pair of linnets who seemed to be trying to steal her material.

The first time I went to the wine shed both wrens and linnets were
there, but nothing happened and I forgot about the original quarrel. By
peering through a crack in the boarding I could look down on the wren in
the nosebag inside. I could see her dark eyes, the white line over them,
and her black barred tail. She was Vigor's wren. She got so tame that
she would not stir when the creaking door was opened close by her, or
when people were talking in the shed; and I used to go often to see how
her affairs were progressing.

All her eggs hatched in time, and the small birds, from being at first
all eyeball, soon got to be all bill. When I opened the bag to look at
them, the light woke them up and they opened their mouths, showing
chasms of yellow throat.

The mother bird fed them several times when I was watc